"Though science, like Nature, may be driven out with a fork, ecclesiastical or other, yet she surely comes back again."--HUXLEY, Prologue to Collected Essays, vol. v. The exercise of a more tolerant spirit, to which reference has been made, had its limits. It is true that Dr. South, a famous divine, denounced the Royal Society (founded 1645) as an irreligious body; although a Dr. Wallis, one of the first members, especially declared that "matters of theology" were "precluded": the business being "to discourse and consider of philosophical inquiries and such as related thereunto; as Physick, Anatomy, Geometry, Astronomy, Navigation, Staticks, Magneticks, Chymicks, and Natural Experiments; with the state of these studies, and their cultivation at home and abroad." Regardless of South and such as agreed with him, Torricelli worked at hydrodynamics, and discovered the principle of the barometer; Boyle inquired into the law of the compressibility of gases; Malpighi examined minute life-forms and the structure of organs under the microscope; Ray and Willughby classified plants and animals; Newton theorized on the nature of light; and Roemer measured its speed; Halley estimated the sun's distance, predicted the return of comets, and observed the transits of Venus and Mercury; Hunter dissected specimens, and laid the foundations of the science of comparative anatomy; and many another illustrious worker contributed to the world's stock of knowledge "without let or hindrance," for in all this "matters of theology were precluded." But the old spirit of resistance was aroused when, after a long lapse of time, inquiry was revived in a branch of science which, it will be noticed, has no distinct place in the subjects dealt with by the Royal Society at the start. That science was Geology; a science destined, in its ultimate scope, to prove a far more powerful dissolvent of dogma than any of its compeers. It seems strange that the discovery of the earth's true shape and movements was not sooner followed by investigation into her contents, but the old ideas of special creation remained unaffected by these and other discoveries, and the more or less detailed account of the process of creation furnished in the book of Genesis sufficed to arrest curiosity. In the various departments of the inorganic universe the earth was the last to become subject of scientific research; as in study of the organic universe, man excluded himself till science compelled his inclusion.